94. How Coaching Made Me a Better Mom

I signed up for coaching to lose weight—but what I didn’t expect was how much it would change my parenting. In today’s episode, I’m sharing the surprising ways mindset work helped me become a more patient, present, and empowered mom.

From early-morning frustrations to perfectionist pressure, I walk you through the real-life moments where coaching shifted my thinking, softened my reactions, and strengthened my connection with my kids. Whether you're a mom, friend, or simply trying to show up better in your relationships, this episode is for you.

What You’ll Learn:
 ✅ How “should” thoughts sabotage your calm
 ✅ Why you don’t need to be a perfect mom (or have perfect kids)
 ✅ How coaching taught me to regulate my emotions—and model that for my boys
 ✅ The one family rule we use for handling big feelings
 ✅ Why letting go of other people’s expectations is the most freeing thing you can do

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This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Transcript

Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is an episode that I think you might like. I signed up for coaching to lose weight, but what I didn't expect is that it would totally transform how I showed up as a wife and a mom.

So today, I just want to talk to you about the mindset shifts I learned through coaching that helped me really reduce my triggers and show up as a better mom.

And you can translate this to whatever—if you're not a mom, this is also what I think helps me show up as a better friend, a better wife, a better coworker—all the things.

So this idea of “we get to decide” is really what the theme of today's show is about. I hope you enjoy it.

I have to tell you, before I started coaching, I was really a victim to other people. In my mind, I always thought I was the receiver of bad feelings or bad thoughts or whatever. I always thought the problem was them.

Coaching really shows you that you're the problem—which is a little bit harsh sometimes, but when you can fully embrace that, you can see how it can just make everything better.

It really only takes one person to fix a relationship. These are just some of my tips and tricks for how I think coaching made me a better mom to the boys.

Because it really wasn't them—it was my thoughts about what was happening.

We've talked about the model before. We have the circumstance, and then we have a thought about it. That thought is really what creates our feelings.

So it's not them, right? It's our thought about them that creates the feeling, and then that creates our actions. That’s what drives our actions.

So, when I would maybe yell—that might’ve happened, right? The best example I’ll give you is...

JT, my big one—my oldest—wakes up early every single morning. He’s just an early riser and he always, always has been.

He’ll wake up at five. If we get him to sleep until six, it’s amazing.

I remember being so frustrated every morning that I would get woken up. Because in my mind, he shouldn't wake me up. Right?

Like, he should still be asleep. Five is an unreasonable time for a child to wake up.

And so it was all these shoulds:

• “He should not be awake at this time.”
• “It is too early.”
• “He should not be waking me up.”
• “I should be getting more sleep.”
• “Doesn’t he know I’m tired?”
• “I’m now going to have a bad day.”

It was this spiral of frustration and bad feelings from these thoughts like: “This shouldn’t be happening. This is unacceptable. Kids shouldn’t wake up this early. He needs to be asleep. I should get to be asleep.”

And I was so frustrated.

When I finally—through coaching—could see that it was all my shoulds that were causing my frustration, and not him waking up, I could embrace the fact that he wakes up.

Like, that’s going to be an amazing skill for him. To be able to wake up early—that's his normal circadian rhythm. The kid’s going to take over the world. What a great skill to have.

And he wants to come say hi first thing in the morning. He wants to come give me a hug and tell me he loves me.

How lucky am I?

So when I could change my mindset about that whole situation, it changed everything about how I was waking up in the morning and how my day started.

Because I could just embrace this wonderful thing about this kid that I was getting mad about—because I was saying it shouldn’t happen.

But who decides what should happen, right?

Who gets to decide what the rule is?

The rule for him is: he wakes up at five. That’s it.

Being able to identify my thoughts and really see how that was affecting my feelings—and then my interactions with him—was so important. It has made all the difference.

Because you can imagine, after eight years of this—he’s eight now—if you went eight years thinking, he shouldn’t be waking me up, tell me how many times you wouldn’t have yelled at that kid and made him feel bad.

Because he would have thought, in his model, when you yell at him for waking you up and tell him he shouldn’t be awake—he’s going to think, there’s something wrong with me.

And I don’t want to do that to him.

Someone else in the world is going to try and tell him there’s something wrong with him, but that’s not my job.

My job is to tell him that everything about him is fine. He’s perfect. He is him—and he’s perfect.

So yelling at him for waking me up because he’s an early riser is nonsensical, right?

When you really can step back—when you’re awake and not tired—and think about how that played out, how essential it was for me to really identify that it was my thoughts, not his actions.

So that coaching sort of mantra—that backbone of what coaching is built on—is that it’s not their actions. It’s your thought about their actions.

And then seeing how it affects your actions toward them—your interaction with them—so, so important.

I think the next thing that coaching helped me with was practicing some emotional regulation—being able to name my feelings in real time.

Even through red! Like, “I’m frustrated. Why am I frustrated?”

And I am not calm 100% of the time—at all. I definitely lose it.

But what I’ve also learned is that if I lose it, I can go back and look at that situation and see where I could’ve done better.

How did I get over the line?

And then, apologizing if I need to—to teach the kids it’s okay to make a mistake. It’s okay to say that you were wrong and apologize if you are, right?

All very important.

And I can also see—where was that frustration building?

Where could I have stepped in sooner and made a request, or changed the situation, or whatever needed to happen?

Where did my thoughts just go too far, where it ended in this breaking point for me?

Being able to name my feelings, see it, backtrack—“Where did this fall off, and how can I do better next time?”

And then being able to apologize.

The next thing I learned through coaching—maybe the most important—was letting go of being a perfect mom.

Bad Moms is one of my favorite movies. It’s not going quite that far, but it is recognizing that all these thoughts we have, all these rules in our manuals, in our reference material about what makes a perfect mom, are total bullshit.

They are not real. Nobody gets to decide what a perfect mom is.

And the thought that I have to live up to someone else’s expectations—when they’re not me? That’s ridiculous. Nobody else in the world lives my life, so nobody else in the world can tell me what I’m supposed to do as a mom.

This is very hard sometimes, right? Especially depending on what community you’re in, what school your kids go to—there can be a lot of pressure to do what the other moms do.

But the other moms aren’t me. And their kids are not my kids.

Understanding that the expectations I was holding about what a good mom does were all made up—and that I get to decide—was very freeing.

And I have to say, my sister really helped me with this. She was one of my guinea pigs when I first became a coach, and I remember coaching her through something like, “How many servings of fruit should the kids be getting?”

It was something about fresh fruit. And I said, “Where is it written down how many servings of fresh fruit a kid has to have per day for you to be a good mom?”

Which sounds crazy when you say it like that, right?

But in our brains, that’s what’s happening:
“If you were a good mom, there would be a beautiful fruit-and-veggie tray waiting after school every day so your kids can have the perfect snack.”

Okay… Some moms can do that. And that’s amazing for them.

But that is not the definition of a good mom.

We get to decide.

And I’ve decided that if my kids feel loved, that’s all they really need.

Then there’s the secondary stuff—get them a good education, teach them not to be jerks, right? But the idea that I need to be a perfect mom and raise perfect kids?

Letting go of all that was very, very important. It changed my relationship with them.

It made all of us feel a little better.

When they’re acting up, I don’t make it mean I’m a bad mom. I can’t control them.

They’re having an emotionally dysregulated moment. That doesn’t mean I haven’t tried to teach them.

I know lots of adults who still have emotionally dysregulated moments. So why can’t my kids?

Their actions—those “big moments”—don’t say anything about me as a mom.

So, letting go of perfectionism, both in what makes a good mom and what makes a good kid—so helpful.

Stopping all the shoulds:

• “They should be doing this.”
• “I should be doing that.”

If your brain is saying “I should…” or “They should…”—just stop.

Whatever comes next in that sentence? Trash it.

All the rules are made up. And they were making everyone miserable.

We get to decide what makes a good mom. And what makes a good kid.

Another thing I learned through coaching that really helped with the kids is helping them work through their feelings.

Helping them ask better questions.

Trying not to answer every question for them, but to let them figure it out. Let them talk through it.

I ask them about their feelings. I teach them that feelings are okay.

In our house, we say: All feelings are okay. All actions are not.

You can get mad at your brother. But you cannot hit your brother.

All feelings are okay.

We can’t be afraid of feelings—they’re just feelings!

But I think we, as parents, are always trying to protect them from negative feelings. And when we do that too much, we’re teaching them that negative feelings are bad—something to avoid or push away.

Which is probably how a lot of overeating happens, right?

You’re sad? Have a cookie.

Feeling bad? Don’t sit with it—eat something.

I know that happened to me when I was a kid. I know it happened to most people.

So learning that I can teach them how to think, not just what to do, has been very important.

Getting them to talk through their feelings. Teaching them that all feelings are okay. That it’s okay to have feelings.

It’s not always okay to act out on them.

But if we do mess up, we can go apologize.

We can say, “I’m sorry I had really big feelings. I didn’t like what happened.”

I have two boys—they’re only 18 months apart.

So it’s like, “I was mad. I hit you. I’m sorry I hit you. I shouldn’t have done that. But I was really mad, and here’s why.”

Now we can talk about the feelings and what led up to that moment, instead of just focusing on the behavior.

It’s hard for me to even pick which one of these lessons is my favorite. Coaching has helped me with these kids in so many ways.

I think just accepting them as beautifully flawed little people… and accepting myself as a flawed mom…

Knowing that I get to decide what a good mom is.

I say this all the time: I’m the perfect mom for them.

Because I am. I’m their mom.

So that’s how that works.

I get to decide I’m the perfect one for them, because they got me—and I got them.

Getting to teach them some emotional regulation? That’s great.

But I think the biggest thing is just the patience, and lowering the expectations—on them and me.

There are no expectations.

We just are. We’re human. We’re flawed. And that’s okay.

I can’t say I’m the perfect mom for everyone else’s kids—but I’m the perfect mom for mine.

They are not perfect children—but they are perfect for me.

And you get to decide that too.

If I had learned, as a kid, that I get to choose my thoughts? That I could change how I see the world by changing how I think about the world?

That would’ve been the best gift in the world.

So I feel very blessed that I get to give that to them.

And now—I’ve gotten to give it to you.

So hopefully, this has been a good episode for you.

I’ll see you next week.